Our Boxing Day is overcast. Snow falls (four inches worth), family sleeps late – the television has had its share of use and all have been able to settle and rest. Coffee and tea warm us. Outside is winter’s cold, an entity that almost requires a northern household to have a fire place to throw off a dry, substantial heat (one day, perhaps) or in-floor heating, at least. Our day is quiet, moving me to recall summer’s colour and warmth, a time when it is easier for an object in motion to stay in motion – a very different time of year. Loreena McKennitt has an album for a day such as this, ‘Music to Drive the Cold Winter Away,’ a Christmas gift from my brother several years back.
Listening to – Ed Sheeran’s ‘The a Team;’ my daughter received sheet music to this song; I’ve had a go at fretting chords and then doing so with the actual song, finding nuance in how it’s played.
“Photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’
Storehouse – St Louis Catholic Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 1
Storehouse – St Louis Catholic Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 2
Storehouse – St Louis Catholic Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 3
Storehouse – St Louis Catholic Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 4
A spring thaw in the early nineteen-hundreds saw several Fort Vermilion area farms flooded. In one instance a farm building washed out, the movement of the water weakening its foundation enough to topple the structure. Timber for that building floated downstream on the Boyer River becoming snagged at a turn in the river as it passed the St. Louis Catholic Mission in Buttertown. Those timbers were pulled from the river and after a time were used to build this storehouse for the mission. The photo was created in May, 2013. Last Saturday night, the image became editing focal point as I showed my son how Lightroom 5 and NiK Software can be used – four versions were produced, some following his eye’s lead.
Listening to – Coldplay’s ‘Yellow,’ a song I worked through after all had gone to bed last night; the piano work is more difficult than the fretwork; the resonance and dissonance found in the chords and alternate tuning are captivating.
Quote to Consider – “Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’
At Christmas, Love amplifies, powerful and lifting, scrabbling through the dark mess of tangle. Care and pardon affirm, anchoring you, there, in other Hearts – disgrace yields, grace overcomes. Love finds its way. At Christmas, the first steps within the incarnation are taken; a betrothed groom and fiancée making the best of things, travel within a colonized Israel to add their names within a census, a decision perhaps that may have to do with the practicality in it being safer to identify as a family with what will follow from the census; the fiancée is pregnant, a surprise to the groom and his betrothed. Are the two young? Is Joseph older and knowing something of how to live a Life within this colonized world? Is he prepared for this night? A makeshift moment allows the two to shelter among animals in a barn or cave. Mary moves into labour, a baby is born, a new Life that becomes central to a grand narrative we all are participating in. The name Joseph is first used with Jacob’s wife Rachel, when she conceives and bears a son after many years barren; Joseph literally means ‘he who takes my shame away.’
All this and more become the Christmas story. A few songs tell the story well; but, the one that might best fit today’s times and needs could be that provided by Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds in ‘Christmas Song.’ I like the conceptualization of any of us as ‘soul-searchers.’ The blood of the children reference is, while scary, accurate within this song – blood covers sins; Christ’s blood was shed for all to overcome their/our sin-state and thereby becomes the blood of the children referred to within the song.
The incarnation is an inconceivable event, something that needs more acceptance than figuring. You need to involve your imagination in such reckoning as precursor to such an event in preparation to be able to recognize when and if such an event does happen, has happened or will happen. You’d have to consider how involving God here on earth might play out.
The song that brought this kind of precursor imagining about best was a Joan Osborne, grunge-rock tune, that I heard most helpfully sung by Martyn Joseph on Radio Ulster’s ‘Rhythm and Soul’; thank you to Presbyterian Pastor, Steve Stockman for bringing all of that about. Here’s Martyn’s version.
Here’s the Joan Osborne version of ‘One of Us.’
Quote to Consider – “The camera doesn’t make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to SEE.” – Ernest Haas
Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s ‘Beyond Us, ‘Not a Good Time for God’ and Martyn’s take on Bruce Springsteen’s ‘If I Should Fall Behind’ and ‘One Step Up.’ Also, taking a listen to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Highway Patrolman.’
There’s a lot of grace encountered in ‘Highway Patrolman;’ Springsteen goes on to tell that it deals with family, responsibility and duty when those things conflict. The lyrics are good dealing with brothers sharing good times as much as the morality involved in dealing with a brother who is straying – lyrics catching my attention follow ….
“Well if it was any other man, I’d put him straight away
But when it’s your brother sometimes you look the other way.”
“Me and Frankie laughin’ and drinkin’
Nothin’ feels better than blood on blood
Takin’ turns dancin’ with Maria
As the band played “Night of the Johnstown Flood”
I catch him when he’s strayin’, teach him how to walk that line
Man turns his back on his family he ain’t no friend of mine.”
May you find Grace this Christmas – my gratitude goes out to each of you who have been part of each step and evolution of this photoblog. Thank you – take good care of your good selves.
An autumn memory, a gift to view as we move into snow and extreme sub-zero temperature – nature’s architecture providing visual articulation of golds on black at harvest.
Quote to Inspire – “Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality …. One can’t possess reality, one can possess images – one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’
Listening to – U2’s ‘In a Little While,’ Linkin Park’s ‘Roads Untraveled,’ Jessica Sanchez’ ‘Lead Me Home’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Shelter from the Storm.’
The reds of the silo structure frame and the perspective created looking through it attracted my eye to the silo and elevator structure last Sunday. Then it’s been about the textures within the image and those applied to the image.
Listening to – ‘Songs for the Philippines,’ a collection of many songs for a mere $10.00 on iTunes – a small, small donation to the Typhoon victims of the Philippines. It’s been One Direction’s ‘Best Song Ever,’ Pink’s ‘Sober,’ Paolo Nutini’s ‘Simple Things,’ Josh Groban’s ‘Brave,’ James Blunt’s ‘Carry You Home’ and Pitbull’s ‘Feel This Moment.’
Quote to Inspire – “The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flaneur finds the world ‘picturesque.’” – Susan Sontag, On Photography
That day – I enjoyed it. Days away that my wife encouraged when the draw back to work and home was the safer, more familiar choice; listening to her I got a hotel room, stayed put, slept and the next morning, looked anew at the world with my camera. Any camera work is about venturing beyond one’s Life script, that next thing needing done, the next thing needing to be said or listened through, that next place to be. You discover your original self as you come against the touchstone of encountering what is new through the lens of your camera and creating an image – you become more of you in the encounter of learning through seeing once again. Something similar is surely meant when photography is considered meditation.
These images are on a backroad near Rycroft, Alberta returning home.
Listening to – The Lumineers’ ‘Stubborn Love,’ Our Lady Peace’s ‘Wipe that Smile Off Your Face’ and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘One Step Up.’
Quote to Inspire – “The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.” Susan Meiselas
In the golden hour, when the sun nears the horizon to sunset, I was travelling, leaving Grande Prairie and had driven past Clairmont and Sexsmith just where the divided highway shrinks down to two lanes. To my right was the patterning of snow covered round bales of hay, a regular undulation resembling a pillowed or pocketed quilt. I stopped, got into my winter gear and with camera claimed these shots.
Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s cover of ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad.’
Quote to Inspire – “My photography is a reflection, which comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity – the suspended moment – intervenes during action, in the viewfinder.” – Abbas
Plymouth Savoy – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 1
Plymouth Savoy – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 2
Plymouth Savoy – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 3
Wagon Wheels – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 1
Wagon Wheels – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 2
Wagon Wheel – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 3
Wagon Wheel – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 4
Wagon Wheel – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 5
Last weekend, on walkabout with my camera, I stopped in at the McNaught Homestead, near Beaverlodge, Alberta, an anchor in my growth as a photographer, a place where I had taken one of two photoplayshops with two instructors calling themselves the Ditch Divas, likely in reference to their stopping for photos alongside roadways. The homestead, as with any farm, is an extraordinarily good place to look at how light, colour, shape and background work together as you consider and make a photograph. On my iPod, I was listening to Susan Sontag’s collection of essays entitled ‘On Photography,’ a good text to listening to at different points in your photographic growth. The photos that follow are taken at the McNaught Homestead. I enjoyed the time with camera and subjects.
Listening to – Krista Tippett’s interview with Eve Ensler of ‘Vagina Monologues’ fame; the interview focused somewhat on sexual violence toward women and later focused on moving on or through cancer treatment. Also, listening to Jack Johnson’s & G. Loves’ song ‘Jungle Gym,’ Tyler Bates’ ‘Ventura’ and ‘Mad World’ by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules.
Quote to Inspire / Consider – “To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability … [all] photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” – Susan Sontag, On Photography.
Buttertown Trail & Homestead – North Vermilion Settlement, Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Returning to High Level from La Crete I chose to investigate briefly the photographic opportunities available at Buttertown, a community just across the river from Fort Vermilion, Alberta. I followed the track through Buttertown finally stopping near this homestead home that may be a century old; it resides only a stone’s throw away from the St. Louis Roman Catholic mission. The moment was quiet, one in which I could hear the wind in the forest, the scrunch of my boots on snow and the occasional drone of vehicles passing miles away. Snow was being loosened from clouds on an overcast, yet moonlit night. What is more, the photograph is shot following sunset and the time is only 6:00 p.m..
Within this image, the track, house, snow and trees recall winter nights walking along less defined paths in what continues to be Alberta’s frontier, its north-central region in and surrounding Wood Buffalo National Park. In those walks, moonlit snow would glow along trails and paths. Most nights would see me cross the kilometre span of Ice Bridge covering the Peace River between December and March. In severely cold temperature, I have walked and encountered northern lights brightening my path with the intensity of vehicle headlights. I have come upon wild horses on trails, not daring to move, shivering, their coats glazed with frost. Two hours hiking would have me out and about looking at the world and move me through ten to twelve kilometres. It was good to move, think and explore.
The tones within the image recall scenes from short stories and novels in which an evening moonlit walk takes a character beyond the safety of home in her or his travel to a neighbor’s home or to town on evening business. Jane Eyre meets the man she’ll later marry, Mr. Rochester by first startling his horse and causing him to fall and sprain his ankle; unwittingly, this is her first encounter with her employer who’s brought her to Thornfield Hall as governess to his child born out of wedlock. Dickens’ story, ‘The Signal Man,’ occurs primarily at night in a cleft of land surrounding a railway switch in conditions similar to those found in this image, conditions ripe for mishap. Many, but not all ‘Ghost Stories’ of M.R. James occur at night in light that obscures perceptions. And, it is perception within half-light scenes that becomes the stage for most occurrences or happenings within Henry James’ novel, ‘Turn of the Screw,’ an excellent ghost story that has the reader consider whether or not the governess actually senses the preternatural existence of others; the alternative is that half-light is playing tricks on her perceptions and that’s she subject to the workings of an overactive, imaginative mind.
In looking into Buttertown, it is actually a name for the North Vermilion settlement associated with Fort Vermilion. The nickname Buttertown came about in the early nineteen hundreds after an incident when some rancid butter had been sold (Place Names of Alberta, Volume IV, Northern Alberta – Merrily K. Aubrey).
Listening to – ‘On Photography’ by Susan Sontag, a selection of essays written about all facets and dynamics of photography, a good listen. Music-wise – I’ve been listening to Dave Matthew & Tim Reynolds concert, ‘Live in Lost Vegas’ – ‘Lying in the Hands of God,’ ‘Some Devil’ and ‘Alligator Pie.’
Quotes to Consider – (1) “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.” (2) “[Photographs] … still want, first of all, to show something ‘out there.’” (3) “[The camera] makes real what one is experiencing … a way of certifying experience … converting experience into an image, a souvenir.” – Susan Sontag, from ‘On Photography’.
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little a your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along.
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of your heart
That lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening a conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
A Threshold Blessing, ‘To Bless the Space Between,’ John O’Donohue
Today, this blessing/prayer for a friend and friends who begin extraordinary travel – that they remain safe throughout the journey and that they are open to what will enrich them.
Images – along the Meikle river, just north of Manning, Alberta.
Listening to: Wayne Watson’s ‘Everything Can Change So Fast’ and Bob Bennett’s ‘Hand of Kindness.’
Quote to Inspire – “A photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes – just sometimes – one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness. Much depends upon the viewer; in some, photographs can summon enough emotion to be a catalyst to thought.” – W. Eugene Smith
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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